In 2011, the government of Kenya created a body mandated with re-uniting unclaimed financial assets with their rightful owners. The concept of realigning financial growth prospects of a nation with a critical factor such as connecting assets with their owners cannot be over emphasized in any country in the world. In a similar manner, the same great need now arises in the digital sphere where a lot of unclaimed assets lie.
Anywhere, you go and
have conversation especially in countries that have highly embraced the digital
revolution from the early 2000s , you will hear of many stories of loss of data
and other critical information on the internet, either contributed to by poor
memory of the asset holder of from malfunction of the system leading to loss of
important data or information over the internet or other online or offline
digital systems.
Personally I recall
having set up an account with a website initially known as wetpaint and organizing
information on there concerning a social enterprise I was working with in the
year 2009 to later lose my account, the information and the well thought out
plans laid out there through the assistance of their program and tools on the
platform. Digital assets a term meaning anything that exists in digital format
and comes with the right to use or electronic files of data that can be used
according to Merlinone, a digital assets management platform asserts that
individuals and other entities ought to carefully evaluate the risks involved
with the loss or destruction of digital assets.
For unclaimed digital assets
authorities should also be set up to administer unclaimed digital assets so as
to bridge the gap created from the loss of access to such valuable digital
assets. Another key driver to the future of how we define and cover digital
assets is right underway, the shift to the metaverse where our understanding of
digital assets might change to encompass more than just electronic data or text
and other information we may not currently consider as digital data in today’s
day and age.
It is therefore, much
imperative that we realise this great need to secure digital assets and
understand or rather manage the risks of digital assests, this perhaps can be realized
through more ethical practices by companies collecting data from individuals or
other corporates for financial related gain or other purposes. The better these
companies commit to more efficient and transparent handling of this
information, the better.
The adoption of charter
should also be encouraged so that the company or entity acting as stewards of
the digital data can commit to the responsibility of protection of the digital
assets. However, in most cases, individuals and entities commit to rendering
their digital assets without reading the full print or rather the terms and
conditions stipulated by the receiver, often denying any responsibility of the
ill-use of the information or the overall loss of it.
With the advancement of
technology to allow for bots to do much more, the delegation of the tasks to
the bots presents an opportunity for the interference with the digital assets
in various ways such as duplication of digital assets without prior authorization
or consent of the authors. Consider the case of the bots that could duplicate
twitter accounts and also in other cases the bots used on websites to interface
the visitor to information regarding products and services provided by the
website platform. The definition of digital assets with soon encompass much
more, as we move to the transhuman phase of human development. Things such as
the digital experience created by a VR metaverse platform will also amount to
valued digital asset as well as “unreal” items such as virtual houses and shops
and land for sale on the metaverse will also matter a lot as digital assets
that will also bring up litigation cases which I believe, the courts or rather
justice system in different countries is not ready to deal with from the fast
advancement of digital technology.
The governments and
private entities ought to stay ahead of the curve in the prediction of the
evolution of the digital sphere with preparedness through legislation in law to
cater to this fast changes in the digital assets sphere as to capitalize or
rather leverage on the growth and development in this ever expanding area of
claimed and unclaimed digital assets and disputes that result , related to the
same.
Considering the
millions of users in the digital sphere that die every day, with no one else
left with the access of their digital platform accounts such as social media
accounts, these creates a leeway for the exploitation of digital assets
including photo, texts, video files, graphic design materials with tagged intellectual value of the digital
assets among others. It is critical therefore, to have third party
administrators who would act as retrievers and reconnect this digital assets to
their rightful owners or the next of kin for better use and stewardship if not
even necessarily for any other gain, a matter of consideration for individual,
corporate entities, other organizations and governments.
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